The Value of Worthless Lives by Ilaria Serra - 9780823226016

The Value of Worthless LivesWriting Italian American Immigrant Autobiographies\nAuthor(s): Ilaria Serra\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Fordham University Press, United States\nImprint: Fordham University Press\nISBN-13: 9780823226016, 978-0823226016\nSynopsis\nThe writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not \""words,\"" making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold.\n In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacythe autobiographies written by immigrants.\n Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration.\n Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generationbootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anar.